Last week brought a slightly worrisome omen for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dan Onorato. An early Rasmussen poll shows Republican Tom Corbett up by 13 points.

Should this worry you? Answer: No. 

Yeah, Corbett is up 49-36. And Rasmussen notes -- with impressive mathematical rigor -- that this puts Corbett "near the critical 50 percent mark." But this is, like 6 months before the election. And I can't help but feel like I've heard this sort of prediction before ... 

In fact, wait ... yes I have. Six months before the May primary, Rasmussen had another poll out, with remarkably similar findings. In that December 2009 survey, the odds-on favorite led a Democratic challenger by an almost identical margin of 48-35.

Except in that race, the favorite was Arlen Specter, and the Democratic challenger was Joe Sestak. We know how THAT turned out. 

Yeah, Onorato's got a tough climb, for all the reasons you've heard about. On the other hand, as noted here previously, being a prosecutor can bite you in the ass if people think you're motivated by partisan self-interest.

Oh, and by the way... you knew Corbett dropped his Twitter subpoeana, right? Turns out the guy he was supposedly after, Brett Cott, got 5 years in prison even without Corbett having to prove Cott had been denouncing prosecutors online.

Gotta say though, that sentence seems extreme. As PoliticsPA notes, former Philly state Senator Vince Fumo got 55 months for Bonusgate-related offenses. Fumo was one of the most powerful figures in Harrisburg -- surely he did more to make Harrisburg what it is than Cott, a legislative aide no one has ever heard of. Then again, no one ever accused Fumo of using Twitter, so I guess he deserves a break.

A final note. Worth a look is this Tribune-Review story last week about UPMC board members receiving big-dollar contracts from the health-care behemoth. It isn't exactly breaking news -- in fact, the very same writer did a very similar piece more than a year ago. But in these days of sanctimonious hand-wringing about political patronage, it's nice to be reminded that the big shots in the private sector do the same thing.

In fact, I guess it's worth noting that there's an unacknowledged conflict of interest in the Trib's story about conflicts of interest. Note this passage:

According to the returns, the Downtown law firm of Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick and Raspanti earned $348,616 in legal fees. William Pietragallo is a UPMC board member. The law firm paid $792,215 to UPMC for heath insurance.

Pietragallo said he filled out a conflict-of-interest form, as he has in past years.

"It reminds me of how much I pay for health insurance," he said.

UPMC isn't Pietragallo's only client, of course. Another of his clients -- as we here at City Paper know only too well -- is one Ritchie Scaife. That's right: The same Ritchie Scaife who is in a protracted divorce dispute with the Tribune-Review's publisher. That's the problem with these conflict-of-interest stories -- and I speak as somebody who's done a few. It's not that there are so few of these connections. It's that in a town like Pittsburgh, there are so many. 

For a guy who called Joe Sestak's campaign viable back in the lonely days of winter, I started second-guessing even as everyone else was warming to the guy. 

That's what they call being a contrarian. Or just plain neurotic. But whatever you call it, I'm not alone. I know more than a few people who began feeling "buyer's remorse" after Sestak beat Arlen Specter in last week's primary. A few of them sound, somewhat belatedly, like Arlen Specter's backers sounded a few weeks ago, worrying about whether Sestak can win in November.

It's to those second-guessers -- the people just like me -- that this post is addressed. 

Let's admit the obvious. If you're worrying that Joe Sestak is going to have a hard time beating the GOP's Pat Toomey this November, Sestak's appearance on Meet the Press yesterday won't assuage your doubt's. Sestak's answers to questions -- especially concerning whether the Obama administration offered him a job to drop out of the race -- sometimes sounded evasive. (Although judging from coverage elsewhere, it doesn't sound like Sestak dreamed up the job offer on his own.) 

Too, at least some evidence suggets that part of Sestak's support was coming from an "anyone-but Arlen" constituency. Note, for example, that Sestak has polled well among voters who thought health-care reform was a bad idea, even though Sestak voted for the reform too.

It's a good bet that Toomey will try exploiting that little paradox. That's why Gregory's questions about Sestak's support of the Obama agenda sounded a bit ominous to me.

Another worry: Does Sestak really have the ground game he'll need for November?

That sounds like a dumb question considering last week's result. And when I put the query to Sestak supporters on Election Night, city councilor Doug Shields told me, "You've just seen the ground game. We didn't have any help from the party establishment." He pointed out that no matter how the endorsements went this spring, groups like labor will certainly back Sestak in the fall. A victory for Toomey, who has long been affiliated with the anti-labor Club for Growth, would be too awful to consider.

Still, there were fewer than 50 people at Sestak's Pittsburgh HQ on Election Night. I've got a feeling that won't be enough: Rank-and-file Democrats turned out to vote against Arlen Specter, but that doesn't mean they'll be as motivated to vote for Joe Sestak.

So let's acknowledge all those concerns, second-guessers. And let's be glad Sestak won anyway. Because no matter what happens in November,his candidacy was a good thing.

First and most obviously, the threat of a Democratic challenger kept Arlen Specter in line for a year of critical votes, most notably on healthcare. God only knows what he would have done without Sestak waiting in the wings. 

Second, the fact that Sestak was in the race may have brought more Dems to the polls last week. And if GOP spinmeisters can be believed, that turnout have spelled defeat for the GOP in a critical special election to replace John Murtha. Granted, that explanation for the GOP's loss may be an attempt by Republican insiders to cover up their own shortcomings. But to me, it's not too big a stretch to say Sestak inspired folks to turn out -- either to vote for Specter or against him -- once they realized Specter had a viable challenger. 

Of course, if Sestak were to lose in November, having Mark Critz in Congress would be little consolation. (And that assumes Critz will retain his seat in the regular election this fall anyway: That race will be a rematch with Republican Tim Burns.) But here's the thing: I truly don't believe Arlen Specter would have beaten Toomey anyway. 

I've sort of been bemused by all the attention given to Sestak's attack ad on Specter, which is widely being touted as the turning point in the race. Didn't we all know that ad was coming? If Sestak hadn't aired something like it, Pat Toomey would have. And then where would we be in November? We've always known Specter didn't have any support among Republicans. What we learned last week is that Dems were never that gung-ho about him either. Would that have changed if Sestak hadn't challenged him? I doubt it. More likely, the lack of Democratic enthusiasm would have manifested itself in November, when we could least afford it. 

So what's the worst-case scenario of this Sestak win? Sestak loses to Pat Toomey, an ultra-conservative in the Rick Santorum mold. That'd be bad, but there's a good chance Specter would have lost anyway. Along the way to November, meanwhile, Sestak's presence in the race ensured a reliable vote in the Senate for healthcare and other Democratic initiatives. And whenthe primary itself rolled around, Sestak may have helped capture a critical swing seat in a special election. That result gave Dems across the country a bit of badly-needed optimism in a difficult year. It's already paid dividends in the form of an especially idiotic Jack Kelly column which contends that somehow, the win was actually a bad thing for Democrats. (Does anyone think Kelly would have made the reverse argument had the GOP come out on top? Anyone?)

So let's be of a resolute good cheer and move forward -- without taking anything for granted, but also without the self-doubt that so often afflicts those of us on the left. Sestak has already been a winning proposition. And this is just getting started. 

There's a notable Pittsburgh theme to the newly announced season for Point Park's professional theater company. Two Pittsburgh-set plays get their world premieres, not to mention the local premiere of a work by bad-boy Irish dramatist Martin McDonagh.

The season opens Sept. 9 with The Umbrella Man. Edward J. Delaney's play, set in Pittsburgh in the late 1980s, concerns a man obsessed with JFK conspiracy theories. The director is Robert A. Miller (last seen at the REP directing his father's Death of a Salesman).

The Umbrella Man script is based on an eponymous screenplay Delaney co-wrote, which in turn is based on a short story of the same title Delaney published in The Atlantic, in 1996. Delaney, who lives in Massachusetts, is assistant editor of The Nieman Journalism Lab, at Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism; the film version of The Umbrella Man, directed by Michael Grasso, is set to be shot in Pittsburgh later this year.

Also brand-new to the stage is Mercy and the Firefly. It's yet another from the keyboard of Pittsburgh-based playwright Amy Hartman -- in fact, it'll be her second world premiere here this year, after Unseam'd Shakespeare stages Mad Honey in June. Mercy is about a high school student brought to Homestead after witnessing the murder of a classmate in East L.A. It'll close the REP's season next April; Melissa Martin, who directed Glengarry Glen Ross for barebones last fall, is slated to direct.

The McDonagh is The Lonesome West, part of his Connemara trilogy also including The Beauty Queen of Leenane. The 1997 play, running next February, will be eagerly anticipated by those who appreciated the playwright's violent but darkly comic vision in works like The Pillowman and The Lieutenant of Inishmore (both done by Pittsburgh Irish & Classical a few years back). Kim Martin will direct.

And this October, the REP stages La Ronde. Arthur Schnitzler's classic is a study of sex and class set in 1890s Vienna, structured as a series of 10 scenes, each featuring a pair of lovers. It's directed, notably, by Robin Walsh: She's best known as a top-flight Pittsburgh-based actress, but in fact it'll be her second directing gig of 2010 ... after Hartman's Mad Honey.

Last month it was Eyjafjallajokull, this time it's the untimely death of Dio that caused the cancellation of Budgie's U.S. tour.

I wrote in this past week's paper about the Welsh metal band; as of this weekend, the show that article tied into on Thursday was cancelled. The members, according to the Allentown Morning Call, had to cancel the tour in order to attend a memorial for Ronnie James Dio on the west coast.

Elko Concerts as of now says another Budgie show is in the works for November and all tickets for the previous cancelled shows will be honored then. Contact Elko for more information.

Peter Wolf is 64 years old. But watching him perform live from a distance, you'd think he's closer to 24. Wednesday night, Peter Wolf and his band brought tons of energy and great music to Mr. Small's Theatre, playing music from his new album for well over an hour to a crowd of middle-aged fans.

Like a lot of older singers in the business, Wolf knew to back himself with an impressive band of experienced musicians, who he praised and shared the spotlight with, letting them take long solos and play some of their own music. Though Wolf dropped his New Orleans accent and persona once or twice between songs, he brought a lot of energy to the show and got the crowd cheering, moving and staying out past its bedtime. 

"I write poems and I am a poem," declares German in her new solo show, which premiered last night at the August Wilson Center's First Voice Festival.

In my profile of German in this week's CP (www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:79346), I quoted several of her poems, but mostly let them speak for themselves. As best as they can, that is, on paper: German's explicitly a performance poet, her work meant written to be recited aloud and even acted out.

At Root's premiere, directed by Heather Arnet, German sang some of her words; spit others out typewriter-quick; and drew out still others in langorous syllables. German often speaks of poetry's sound, and this 75-minute piece in fact ends with a sort of incantation about her "going over onto the sound and into the sound" and a request that we join her (a request her joyful dance moves throughout the evening made all the more enticing).

As with music, in a performance like this it's neither possible nor wise to try to separate the sense from the sound. But German's subject matter and straight-up rhetorical skills continued to prove as potent as in previous shows, like Testify, or "Let Her Be a Sweet Thing," her recent civil-rights-themed work performed at the Toonseum.

The show ranged from a summoning of her childhood in Los Angeles, when she first experienced her deep love of poetry, to a thunderous climax: a potent swat at white privilege and white presumptiveness that begins, innocently enough, with German describing herself attending a breakfast meeting.

Here's a few lines from the show as a whole that jumped out as especially good, most somehow combining a sense of outrage with German's deep ability to empathize. German describing street kids "working slave-plantation hard at the myth of their own ruthlessness." German imagining the violent fates of similar kids as "all those new teeth in the ground." Telling how she comes to understand certain situations: "Some things I can't see with my eyes open."

As with the premiere of any stage show, this one had its slow spots and its bugs to work out. But it's got potential for a life beyond Pittsburgh -- and hopefully for additional performances in Pittsburgh, too, as the premiere (result of an August Wilson Center fellowship) was a one-off for now.

One part of Root I'd definitely keep is the sequence describing an encounter with a disheveled, hugely fat man on a city bus. It begins with minutely observed, poetically rendered details and shifts imperceptibly into a metaphysical conversation between the poet and the man, who's just "looking for something he lost a long time ago."

The show's coda, by the way, includes German giving voice to hypothetical skeptics about a story she's just told, about a shape-shifting ancestor. She replies, "Didn't I just turn myself into all kind of poems and then back again?"

And it's true -- she did.

Go get 'em, Samantha Bennett!

Courtesy of Media Matters, we learn that Bennett -- who contributes a regular column to the Post-Gazette -- is taking on Pat Buchanan over this column.

In that now-notorious piece, Buchanan expressed concern that if the Senate confirms Elena Kagan's appointment to the Supreme Court, the court will be packed with Jews and Papists:

If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will consist of three Jews and six Catholics (who represent not quite a fourth of the country), but not a single Protestant, though Protestants remain half the nation and our founding faith.

Finally -- somebody willing to speak out about the shameful exclusion of Protestants from public life. It's the last acceptable prejudice, I tell you!

Bennett's own column typically stays out of the partisan fray. But in addition to her P-G gig, Bennett  is president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. And in that capacity, she more or less takes the piss out of the Buchanan, telling Media Matters' Joe Strupp that

"Pat Buchanan used to be kind of the fringe guy. But he has been surpassed in that role. I guess he feels like he has to come up with something more outrageous and potentially offensive to stay in the spotlight and keep his position."

Buchanan, Bennett suggests, is trying to cling to the spotlight in "the theater of outrage. This has been our public discourse. It is who is shouting the loudest." Strupp adds such right-wing blather may be "hurting columnists as a whole," since as Bennett says, "[I]t can put more pressure on the rest of us to be more out there."

Actually, I wish that were more true. If you look at the Post-Gazette roster of columnists, for example, nobody comes anywhere CLOSE to being as bonkers as Jack Kelly, the Burghosphere's bete noir. That's too bad, in my book. But these days, an ultra-left perspective is about as hard to find on a newspaper editorial page as it is on the Supreme Court. 

In fact, THAT may be the last acceptable prejudice.

Democrats are claiming that Dan DeMarco, their write-in candidate to challenge embattled state Sen. Jane Orie, has the signatures he needs to face her in November. As Early Returns previously reported, Orie tried to outflank the Democratic effort with a write-in ballot of her own, but if the Dems can be believed, she was unsuccessful.

From the release: 

Dan DeMarco, candidate for the State Senate, announced today that he has received enough write-in votes in Tuesday’s Primary Election to win the Democratic nomination and to face indicted Senator Jane Orie in the November general election.

At a press conference today at Evergreen Community Park in Ross Township, DeMarco released unofficial election data collected by his campaign from polling places around Pennsylvania's 40th District. The data represented 50 percent of the district’s precincts and 51 percent of the total write-in votes cast on election day. According to the results, DeMarco leads Senator Orie by almost a 4 to 1 margin.

"Our campaign put forward an amazing election day effort, and almost 6,000 write-in votes were cast for this Senate race. Although we are still awaiting official results from the Allegheny and Butler County elections bureaus, it would be statistically impossible for Jane Orie to overcome this deficit with the remaining votes left to be counted," said DeMarco. "We have a 99 percent confidence level in our data and expect this trend to continue throughout the rest of the precincts."

DeMarco added, "This write-in victory suggests that voters are fed up with 'business-as-usual' in Harrisburg and that they want to have an open discussion of the issues facing Pennsylvania. In this election, the voters are sending a message loud and clear that they don’t want to give an incumbent a free ride back to Harrisburg, especially an indicted one."

Photo by Josephine Heidepriem

Howdy blog-readers!

Here's a thing for you: David Dondero is kind of a big deal. And not because he used to play in This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, and also Sunbrain, though he did do those two things. More because he's a pretty great songwriter. The Texas-based musician, working mostly within a folky rock idiom, writes great character pieces -- sort of cinematic songs. He did a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR, so do yourself a favor and when the boss takes off to play golf for the rest of the afternoon, click the link and crank that shit. Then check him out tonight at Garfield Artworks in a show put on by frequent CP contributor, Wire reader and turkey sandwich eater Manny Theiner.

In recent years, there's been a lot of talk about how statewide races are decided in Philadelphia. This year may be an exception. Both gubernatorial candidates are from Pittsburgh, after all ... and the next head of the Democratic State Committee could be a Pittsburgher as well.

Jim Burn, who currently presides over the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, hopes to be named as the statewide organization's next chair when it meets next month.

"I've spoken to [current chair] T.J. Rooney, who said he was ready to step down," Burn says. If he is elected by committee members, he says he plans to "work with [Democratic gubernatorial candidate] Dan Onorato to really get the party's message out there."

I've got a call in to the state committee to verify Rooney's desire to vacate the position. I'll post any reply here.

But Burn says that as far as he knows, no one else is interested in the post. To me, of course, that's reason to wonder about the job's desirability. ("I guess I must have been a goaltender in another life," he says: "I just miss having everyone take shots at me.") But then again, I sometimes wonder why Burn ever sought the county spot.

During his tenure here, after all, Burn has had to remove the city committee's chair, Tonya Payne, from her post. (You'll recall that during her city council reelection bid in 2009, Payne lost the Democratic primary but waged an unsuccessful write-in campaign against the party's nominee.) He's also wrestled with whether to allow "open primaries" in which party endorsements would be non-binding on committee members: That hotly-debated reform proposal failed when the committee couldn't muster a quorum to vote on it. And he's had to contend with some shenanigans in a city council endorsement last year. (Fans of South Hills politics take note: There's more about what's going on in the 19th Ward later in this post.) 

Still, Burn has had some fun with the post as well -- most recently by having Tommy Chong host a party fundraiser.

So ... what would he do if he is chosen to head the state commitee? 

"I really like [former DNC chair Howard*] Dean's '50-state strategy'" -- in which Democrats try to drum up candidates even in heavily Republican areas. "I truly believe Pennsylvania has the possibility to do that."

Step 1 would be a series of "regional rallies" this summer, paired with meetings with officials all over the state. And while Burn acknowledges that "some counties will never vote Democratic," he holds out hope that "if you take time to listen to Democrats in those areas -- and even Republicans -- you can start to close the margins in rural parts of the state." 

In other committee-related news ...

-- The battle for control of Pittsburgh's 19th Ward, a battle which has pitched longtime ward chair Pete Wagner against former ally Anthony Coghill, could be getting ugly soon.

At last report, Coghill and Wagner seem to have split the ballot, with each man having a more-or-less equal number of committeepeople supporting him for ward chair. And there are rumblings that at least one of the elected committeepeople -- one of those numbered in Wagner's column -- may have their residency challenged by Coghill's side. Word is the committeeperson has a home outside the city -- a domicile that has a "homstead exemption" attached to it. Such tax breaks are limited to properties that serve as the owner's primary residence. And of course, committeefolk are supposed to actually live in the districts they represent. 

Burn says he has heard such rumors too, though he won't act unless somebody formally lodges a complaint. "It's like a courtroom," he says: "If it isn't brought before me, I can't act. Unless somebody writes me a letter, I'm not doing anything." But he says that if such a complaint is brought forward, "I will not allow the 19th Ward committee to meet [and choose a ward chair] until the residency issue is resolved."

Ideally, the 19th Ward would clear up this matter and select a ward chair by mid-June, when the county committee convenes and picks a new ward chair. But "some wards won't be done with their restructuring by then," Burn acknowledges.

-- Finally, there has already been some head-scratching over the fact that Daniel Jimenez failed to win a spot on the state committee, despite having campaigned more aggressively for the spot than anyone else in recent memory. Rest assured that Burn is just as confused as you are.

"Daniel did everything right," Burn says. "He had the party endorsement. He raised $5,000 for this race, and knocked on 6,000 doors. He's young, he's energetic, he's brilliant. I cannot underestand this for the life of me." 

Jimenez was one of six candidates running for five committee spots in the 38th Senatorial district. (In large counties, spots are divvied up among Senate districts in the county.) Jimenez is a University of Pittsburgh grad student who studies all kinds of sophisticated medical stuff I could barely follow when he explained it to me. He was also a highly visible figure in the fight against Luke Ravenstahl's unpopular tuition tax last year. And yet on Tuesday, Jimenez finished sixth, just 30 votes behind Matthew Arena.

Arena is old-school: Ironically, he's previously run against the top vote-getter in the district, Brenda Frazier, in a 2007 county-council campaign where he acknowledged being "not familiar with [the terminology" of phrases like "sexual orientation."

Some theorize that Jimenez's last name -- which sounds, you know, kind of Mexican -- might have damaged his prospects. Burn isn't buying that: "There are places in southwestern Pennsylvania where I couldn't dismiss that," he says. "But Daniel is coming from a very progressive district, so I just can't accept that." Burn figures it had more to do with Jimenez's middle-of-the-pack position on the ballot, and the fact that Arena's name was more familiar with previous runs.

Jimenez himself has posted a map of election results, which shows he underperformed in the Lawrenceville area, and some of the suburban communities.

In any case, Burn says, "We've got to get him elected to something. Without question, this guy is a rising star -- somebody leadership needs to embrace."

There is, in fact, at least some hope that Jimenez will end up on the state committee. The state committee bylaws require that the committee be gender-balanced. Right now, Allegheny County seems poised to have two more women than men representing it. If the net result of elections in all 67 counties has a similarly disproportionate representation of women, committee bylaws allows for the selection of "at large" members to rectify any imbalance. Jimenez could get a spot that way. 

But Burn says he doesn't yet know the final results of committee races statewide. And it's not entirely clear -- at least to him -- what the process is for choosing the at-large members will be. "Sometimes the bylaws read like quantum physics," he says. We should have more answers in the next couple weeks. 

And just think: Burn is volunteering to take on these headaches from all over the state.

*Ed note. I originally typed in "John Dean" there, due to a mental glitch on my part. Apologies to Mr. Burn for creating the impression that he was a closet Nixonian.